She let out a long sigh. If only there was a spell to make shackles fall away. She was sure there was, but it was probably the province of the worshippers of Ban-ath, the God of Thieves.
The hatchway above opened and a rope ladder was lowered. From the shaft of light she deduced it was somewhere near mid-day. The skinny, pockmarked man came down the rope ladder again, and Sandreena began a mild meditation in anticipation of another beating.
Another man followed the first, the robed man she had encountered on the road where Ned was murdered, and behind him a third. Something different was about to happen and Sandreena readied herself for death, if that was the Goddess’s will. For one second she had an irrational urge to hit Amirantha one more time, and she let that go and the warlock’s image was replaced by an image of Grand Master Creegan. For a moment she was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of loss at the idea of never seeing him again. She forced herself to breathe slowly.
The three men came to stand before her, and the third man, the one she’d never seen before, said, ‘Release her.’
The pocked man produced a key and unlocked her shackles. The third man was portly, though she suspected there was muscle underneath the fat given how nimbly he had come down that ladder. He had a gravelly voice, and a nondescript face: round with brown eyes, a small nose, and a small mouth. He said to her, ‘Can you climb that ladder?’
She stood up slowly, and found that her healing magic had given her enough strength not to stagger. ‘I can,’ she said, her voice sounding hoarse in her own ears.
‘Come,’ is all the man said. He turned towards the ladder. The other two men, the one who had questioned her and the one she had met on the road, stood one on each side, ready to respond if she tried anything. Realizing she was still too weak to fight effectively, she judged it best to come peacefully. Besides, she knew they had weapons secreted upon them and if she was to try for an escape, up on deck was better than here.
She walked slowly to the rope ladder and climbed up. As she reached the hatch above, two rough-looking sailors hauled her out onto the deck. She blinked at the bright afternoon sun after all the time she had spent in the hold. She appeared to be on a ship anchored offshore, amid a fleet of other ships, all in the process of being unloaded. There was a seemingly endless traffic of boats rowing to and from the shore, where a throng waited to haul the cargo up onto the beach. There, a camel caravan waited. As her eyes adjusted to the light she decided she was somewhere in the Bitter Sea between Ranom and Durbin. There was no other sea coast on Triagia that she knew of with blowing dunes and she seriously doubted she had been at sea long enough to be anchored off the coast of Novindus or Wiñet.
Twenty armed men were arrayed in a circle around her and another dozen sailors were scattered through the rigging watching. The majority of them wore some sort of black headgear: hats, kepis, berets, or flop hats. She was certain she was in the hands of the Black Caps.
The third man said, ‘Come,’ and moved towards the stern of the ship. He entered a cabin in the sterncastle with two armed guards posted outside the door. Inside there was a table with food and wine on it. ‘Eat,’ he told her.
She hesitated only for a moment, then sat down and began to tear at the roast duck. She sipped the wine and pushed it away. In her weakened condition she knew wine would quickly go to her head. She asked, ‘Can I have water?’
He clapped his hands and one of the guards looked in, sword drawn and ready for trouble. ‘Bring water,’ her host said and the guard disappeared. He was a hard looking man, despite his ample girth, perhaps forty or fifty years of age, but there was nothing about him that wasn’t dangerous. She’d seen his kind before, a stout man of jovial humour who could turn murderous in a moment and never lose his smile. He moved easily as a trained warrior might move. She saw scars, many of them, tiny ones on his hands that told of brawling and one on his neck where someone had almost taken his life. His eyes were dark as he studied her. His features were classic Keshian, but not Trueblood. He could pass for a man of the desert or any of the smaller cities around the Overn Deep. His accent was slight, as if he had travelled and spoke many languages.
They sat in silence waiting until a minute later the guard appeared with a large pitcher of water and a mug. Sandreena ignored the mug and drank straight from the pitcher. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she had become chained in that hold.
‘The wine not to your liking?’ asked her host.
‘I’m weak enough that two mouthfuls and I’ll be drunk,’ said Sandreena.
He chuckled. ‘I’ve always admired one thing about all the martial Orders, no matter which god or goddess they serve: no matter the circumstance, you’re always ready to give up your life for a higher cause, and to ensure you’re able to do that, you remain sober.’
‘I’ve had my drunken nights,’ said Sandreena. She could feel strength returning to her as she wolfed down the food.
‘No doubt,’ said the man. He waited until she slowed her eating, then said, ‘To business. I have a proposition.’
She put down the bowl of potatoes she had been devouring. ‘Yes?’
He sat back and looked at her. ‘I believe we have some common interests.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Go on.’
‘Do you know who we are?’
She paused, then said, ‘I believe you to be part of an organization called the Black Caps by the people who live near the Peaks of the Quor.’
‘As good a name as any.’ He gazed out of the window, then said, ‘We are what is left of a very large organization that has been reduced to what you see here, a small band of desperate men and women. Let me indulge myself in a short history, if I may.
‘Three hundred years ago, a baker by the name of Shamo Kabek resided in a small town a day’s wagon ride from the City of Great Kesh. He and his two sons were plagued by a tax collector who had designs upon Shamo’s young wife. Despite appeals to all and sundry, the tax collector continued to make unwelcome advances. One day returning from the mill with his week’s flour, Shamo found the tax collector had assaulted his woman, in front of two very small and frightened boys.’
Sandreena frowned; this story was designed to appeal to a member of her Order, she knew, but what did it have to do with her current situation?
‘Shamo confronted the tax collector. He was Keshian Trueblood, Shamo was not. Shamo assaulted the man and was sentenced to carry out hard labour for twenty years.
‘As is common in such circumstances, he never lived long enough to regain his freedom, dying in a mining accident six years later. But he left behind two very angry little boys.’ The man paused and poured himself a flagon of wine. ‘When they were little more than boys, the two slipped into the tax collector’s house and cut his throat while he slept. Apparently someone else in the household awoke, for the next morning a city watchman found everyone in the house dead. The boys had been fast, efficient, and merciless. The tax collector’s wife, daughter, small son and three servants all paid the ultimate price for the tax collector’s uncontrollable lust.
‘Thus were the Nighthawks born.’
‘True?’ asked Sandreena.
‘True enough. There may be an embellishment or two. The boys may have ambushed the tax collector on the road and hit him over the head with a rock for all I know. But that is what we are taught when we pledge to the Brotherhood of Assassins.’
‘You’re Nighthawks?’
‘Nighthawks, yes. Black Caps as well. And we have several other names as well when it suits us. I am Nazir and my title is Grand Master, much as your Creegan is in your order.’
‘Rumour is you were wiped out some years back in northern Kesh.’
‘A rumour that suited our purposes.’ He sighed. ‘We were for nearly two hundred years a very small organization. While it may seem a great many people in the world need killing, in fact there are far fewer than you might think; and even more to the point, there are even fewer who are willing to pay for the service. But there are
always enough that a handful of trained killers can make a decent living. For years we traded on our reputation and made a good living. When we were not out plying our trade, we lived in a small town in the North of Kesh, the name I will not share in case this discussion does not bear fruit. We had families; we trained our sons, and our daughters were permitted only to marry those young men we brought into the Brotherhood.
‘A hundred years ago that changed.’ He sighed as if it were a personal memory he was recounting, instead of lore. ‘What do you know of the Pantathians?’
Sandreena paused. She had eaten too fast and her stomach was starting to object. She sat back. ‘Little. A race of serpent men, had something to do with the Great Uprising of the Dark Brotherhood, something like that?’
‘Something like that,’ he said dryly. Sandreena could sense that something in this man was profoundly tired, almost defeated. He continued to look out of the window as he said, ‘They are an interesting people.’
‘Are? I was told they had been obliterated.’
‘Yes, you would hear that.’ He turned to face her. ‘The Pantathians were a created race, raised up from snakes by a being named Alma-Lodaka, of a race called in their tongue the Valheru. Our lore speaks of them as the Dragon Lords.’
Now he had her full attention, her meal forgotten. ‘Few know about these things.’
‘In the common population, yes,’ agreed Nazir. ‘But as in all such organizations, the Brotherhood of Assassins has a strong dedication to tradition.’ He sighed. ‘But that tradition was subverted, distorted, and eventually used to enslave us, as we became a cult of demon worshippers.’
‘Dahun,’ said Sandreena.
‘Yes,’ said Nazir with a smile. ‘You were there, when the gate was destroyed by the magician Pug and his . . . what do they call themselves? The Conclave? It is no matter. Many of us died, but there were others there as well.’
‘What does this have to do with the Pantathians?’
‘I’ll return to that in a moment. Those you call the Black Caps are those in the Brotherhood who eventually rejected the demon worship and tried to return to our old traditions.’
‘Tried?’
‘Demons and their servants do not brook betrayal with grace. We were not permitted to withdraw quietly from their company, and many of our brotherhood were true believers. In short, we became less trusted, less privy to the inner workings of Dahun’s servants’ plans, and we were watched. Moreover, we were forced to take into our ranks mercenaries with no bond to us whatever. In short, it was an unhappy circumstance.’
‘Not to sound indifferent to all this, but why is it of any import to me?’
‘Despite your belief in your goddess and her plan for you, I assume you would prefer to live, rather than the alternative?’
‘A fair assumption,’ said Sandreena. Between her unexpected healing magic and this meal, she felt ready to fight again if the need arose.
‘Then imagine how it was for those of us in the family to realize when we were children that our parents had bound us to serve a demon with our lives if need be. We were promised chieftaincies, eternal life, and . . .’ He waved his hand. ‘The usual demented nonsense.’
She said nothing.
‘Over the years, there were those of us who recognized in each other that same sense that we were trapped in madness. A group of us managed over time to create a separate brotherhood within the larger one, a brotherhood dedicated to one thing: survival.’
‘Why not just leave?’
‘Leave? Just walk away from our families and heritage?’ He chuckled. ‘A few did, those whose temperament was ill suited to our trade and practices. Most were relegated to support roles, as cooks, menial labour, and tradesmen: useful in many ways, especially as eyes and ears throughout the Empire and Kingdoms.
‘But at our heart we are family; even after the influx of those not related by blood we still felt a kinship, because despite our differing reasons for being in the Brotherhood, by birth or recruitment, we swore an oath.’
‘To Dahun?’
He shook his head. ‘Before Dahun. We swore an oath to one another.’
‘And those who tried to leave?’
‘Hunted down and executed.’
‘Hardly a familial act.’
‘Betrayal is the ultimate insult. And while you of the Shield of the Weak may be more kindly disposed towards those who elect to leave your ranks, not all templars are: the Hunters, the Arm of Vengeance?’ Those were the martial Orders of the temples of Guis-wa, the Red Jawed Hunter, and Kahooli, the God of Vengeance.’
She shrugged. Martial Orders of the temples often had their differences, sometimes ending in bloodshed. In ages past her own order had been involved in a years-long armed struggle with the Brotherhood of The Hammer, servants of the God of War, TithOnanka. ‘What am I to do with all of this? Why haven’t you just hit me over the head and dropped me over the side?’
‘There’s use for you yet, Sister Sandreena.’ He put his hands on the desk and stood up. ‘We have no wish to bring the temples down on us. Sparing you may gain us a slight advantage in the future. Chaos runs amok across the lands, and armies are on the march. We of the Brotherhood of Assassins not caught up in that madness seek less strife, not more. Moreover, even were we to find a tiny corner of the world in which to hide, a jot of land no one else wanted where we could reside in relative peace and comfort, it would be small consolation to us that we were the most peaceful, comfortable inhabitants of a world when it came to an end.’
‘End?’
He sighed, sat back and held up a finger, ‘And that brings me back to the Pantathians and to why we need you alive, and to the ultimate point of all this: I know why Dahun was trying to come to this world.’ He sighed. ‘And I need you, because there is something out there that terrified a Demon King, and we must eventually face it together.’
Chapter Eighteen
Evacuation
MARTIN SHOUTED HIS COMMAND.
Every bowman on the walls fired down into the surging mass of Keshian soldiers storming the gate. For two days the gates had smouldered, as townsmen doused the back of them with water, slowing the burn, risking injury or death as the Keshians continued to hurl rocks at their target.
The second night Sergeant Ruther had quipped there probably wasn’t a rock left on the beach a man could carry.
When the gate gave way, it collapsed suddenly. Martin barely had time to order the retreat into the keep. The last three days had been unnerving. Martin had read histories of sieges, specific ally the previous siege of Crydee by the Tsurani, but they had lacked the great siege engines Kesh employed.
He had also read about sieges of other cities and what their population endured. Crydee was not built for such a thing. The legendary siege of Deep Taunton until relieved by Guy du Bas-Tyra had lasted months. That population had been near starvation when the Keshians had fled.
This siege would last perhaps two days longer, no more and possibly less. If the Keshians’ rams were big enough and durable enough they could be inside the keep before dawn tomorrow. If the defenders could fire a ram at each portcullis, the Keshians would be forced to withdraw, then clear away the debris and start again.
But Martin knew he was only buying time. Time in which he hoped his father and the relief column would arrive.
The Keshians were returning bow fire as best they could and Martin knew that once they climbed the stairs up the inside of the wall, most of the defenders’ height advantage would be lost. With no stonework to protect them from archers atop the keep, the Keshians would bring large shields and two well-trained men could crouch behind them, with their archer risking only a moment’s exposure to shoot at the defenders. The Keshians wouldn’t care how many defenders they killed, their purpose was to keep the bowmen from Crydee crouched behind their walls, heads down so the massive rams they brought were allowed to reach the outer portcullis of the barbican without those moving them taking too many casualties.
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The last remnants of the outer wall’s huge gates collapsed in a shower of char and sparks and the Keshians now flooded into the bailey. Sergeant Ruther said, ‘We’re going to run out of arrows before they run out of soldiers, sir.’
‘I know,’ said Martin, exhausted from a week of little sleep, scant food, and worry. He had ordered the last of those in the outer bailey into the castle an hour ago and now they were locked in.
The keep’s entrance was essentially an open box with double portcullises. Entering that box attackers would be staring at a stone wall, and beyond the second iron portcullis were two doors, on the right and left.
Between the two portcullises was the ‘murder room’. It was there attackers would be caught between the two heavy metal gates while bowmen from above could fire down through archer’s slits. It would be in that thirty-five feet where the Keshians would lose the most men in the shortest amount of time if they tried to cross the space exposed to the archers and hot oil from above.
Martin knew they wouldn’t. Their rams would have broad-tented roofs of wood and treated leather, slow to catch fire unless doused with the hottest flaming oil.
Once the second portcullis was down, the Keshians would have to choose which of the two reinforced wooden doors to assault. Either or both could be blocked or defended depending on what the occupants decided was the best choice, and the attackers would be forced to pick one and hope they could get though it without massive losses in the murder room. It was the genius of the design that the defenders had half a chance to waste valuable minutes and lives assaulting the wrong door.
Martin worried it would be long enough for his plan to work.